Eurogamer 2014: My Experience at the UK Gaming Expo

Eurogamer was awesome this year! It was a great chance to check out some unique gaming merchandise, new and upcoming releases, and just generally hang out in a kind of gaming utopia. (Don’t get me wrong we really need PAX here in England!) The expo lasted for four days and even though I was only there for one of them, I still managed to squeeze in the time to play most of the games I’m super excited for in this year and the next.

The convention spanned two floors in what used to be an old concert hall. The building wasn’t very well lit and reminded me of an abandoned shopping center–except it had a ton of cool, geeky stalls instead of shops. It was quite busy, but not as crammed as I thought it would be, especially later on in the evening, so people may have already left. There were a few people dressed up in Mario and Luigi suits, and they posed with people and took pictures, and also a few Sektor Ermac and Cyrax costumes from Mortal Kombat.

If you’d like an expedited tour of the floor, check out this video I filmed at the convention (Music is courtesy of ACloudCalledKlaus), and read my thoughts on the games below!

Ultra Street Fighter 4

There was a tournament area where this game was being streamed on a large TV screen. People who turned up to the expo early enough could sign up to participate in the competition, which I half-watched while playing the game myself. There are a few new characters on the new game: Poison (a blond woman with a dodgy pink hat but a mighty whip), Rolento, Hugo (a heavy character, massive in size but incredibly slow), Alena (a fighter who’s special power is that she can heal during battle) and Decapre (looks like a female clone of Bison, punches hard and fast- almost indescribable). The controls were typical of the old Street Fighter games I’ve played using directional swipes on the control stick and the lettered buttons and back buttons to control the strength of a kick or punch.

Mortal Kombat X

After playing multiple rounds of Street Fighter, we thought we’d stay with the fighting games and head straight over to the 18+ section to play the latest Mortal Kombat game. The game was set up on PS4s, and it was the first time I used the new console–Now I want a PS4 even more! Mortal Kombat X has amazing graphics; the new fighters are interestingly designed with much more gruesome fatalities than ever before. I beat my partner at this game so many times (literally just mashed buttons in the correct directions) and considering it was only my second time EVER playing Mortal Kombat, I was feeling very triumphant indeed. I used Kotal Kahn who resembles an Aztec warrior; he is, after all, using Sun God, War God and Blood God fighting styles, which all have different special attacks and give access to various weapons.

I definitely preferred this game to Ultra Street Fight 4 simply because of the overall dark themes and brutal take downs that you can play around with. I also preferred the controls for the game more even though Ultra Street Fighter 4 is easier to learn. With Ultra Street Fighter 4, you need a lot of speed and combination practice to be successful, but with Mortal KombatX you need to play with precision and be more tactical, which I like.

The Evil Within

I was super stoked for this game, and watching Betheseda stream it on Twitch only made me itch for the release date. But I got my hands on it while I was at Eurogamer, and playing The Evil Within spooked me the hell out! Wearing a headset really let the sound work come through, complete with creepy sound effects and gurgling zombies. They also made sure that the room which we were all playing the game on was very dark, and I definitely gave the guys who were helping people out with potential problems something to laugh about–even if it was at my expense! There was an introduction video to the game, but it was a timed demo with a long queue, so I opted out of learning about the profound reason behind the mains guy’s death-wish-quest. Instead I got killed a million times, set a bomb off instead of walking around it, exploding my limbs (with very true-to-life graphics), and endured crazy jump scares. (The enemies spawn out of nowhere; it’s so unpredictable!) As I walked away from the game area, having played the demo, I knew I would be buying the game as soon as it was released.

Assassin’s Creed Unity and Rogue

Next, in another room, some guys from Ubisoft were showing exclusive trailers and gameplay footage from the upcoming Assassin’s Creed Unity game. The gameplay featured an example of black box missions, which are missions with an assassination objective and multiple way of achieving it, breaking away from linear missions into a more diverse way of playing. Using eagle vision in certain areas of the mission reveals little side quests that help towards the main objective. I love this franchise and loved it even more after realizing how mind bogglingly awesome this game is going to be when it reaches my hand in November. The graphics are truly spectacular and as beautiful as it all looks the story is very interesting, too. The game has the biggest map an Assassins Creed game has ever had, as well, so there’s so much to explore and learn!

After the video and gameplay were shown, we were whisked off into another room to try out the new Assassins Creed Rogue game, which, I have to admit wasn’t as exciting as Unity. I find the whole idea of being on a ship for a long time slightly boring, though it was still a great opportunity to play it exclusively. You started off on a ship and had to take down a certain number of French ships using bombs and cannons. After defeating them you could loot the French ships and take prisoners- using them to repair your ship (if damaged).

After playing all the games I wanted to it was time to leave but not without buying a Spiderman keyring and grabbing a pikachu hat. Next year, I hope to buy more merchandise and spend more of the week at the expo as opposed to spending just a few hours. Still, it was totally worth it.